New Night Sky Supernova: How to See It in Telescopes

NASA's Swift spacecraft captured this view of the new supernova in galaxy M82 on Jan. 22, 2014

NASA/Swift/P. Brown, TAMU

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WinterTreatsforAmateurAstronomers:Photos

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Throughout the year there are many beautiful sights to be seen above our heads in the Northern Hemisphere, but the crisp dark nights are without doubt the best for hunting down celestial wonders. The skies of the cold months ahead are home to some stunning sights, many of which you won't even need a telescope to spot them.
The sight of the constellation Orion rising high in the eastern sky is a sure sign that winter is upon us. One of the more well-known deep-sky objects is found nestled in the boundaries of Orion, the Great Orion Nebula (or M42). It can be seen from a dark site with the naked eye as a fuzzy patch just below Orion’s famous three star belt, but binoculars or telescopes reveal beautifully delicate wispy filaments of nebulosity. This is one of the best examples of a star-forming region and some of its young hot stars can be seen buried in the nebula.
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The Orion Nebula represents stellar birth but stars do not live for ever. The Crab Nebula in nearby Taurus is a supernova remnant, the remains of a star that catastrophically exploded in 1054. The initial explosion, which could be seen in daylight, was recorded by Chinese astronomers and occurred when a massive star around 6,500 light years away reached the end of its life. The Crab Nebula is known as M1 on Charles Messier’s catalog and cannot be seen with the naked eye so a small telescope is needed to detect it.

The Hyades Cluster is much easier to detect in Taurus as it can be seen clearly with the naked eye. The constellation of Taurus depicts a bull, charging with his head lowered and the stars of the Hyades cluster represent its head. It is the nearest open cluster to our solar system at just 153 light-years away. The cluster can be found by following the line from the belt stars of Orion to the north west. It is easily recognized by the bright red star Aldebaran which depicts the eye of Taurus.

Todd Vance (Creative Commons)

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A cluster that requires a little more effort to find is M36 in the southern section of the constellation Auriga. The cluster was discovered in 1654 and is one of the three found in Auriga. At a distance of about 4,100 light-years away it is just beyond naked eye visibility, but binoculars will reveal it as a faintly glowing patch of light. It is thought the cluster is home to about 60 stars, most of which can be seen through a telescope at about 15 centimeters aperture.

NASA

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For the last few years we have been able to enjoy the sight of Jupiter shining brightly in the winter sky. Like all planets, Jupiter moves and over the next few months we can find it in the constellation Gemini. It is easily visible to the naked eye and is the brightest object in that part of the sky (except when the moon is present). A good pair of binoculars on a sturdy tripod mount should just about reveal four of its many moons while a telescope will unveil some beautiful detail in the planet's atmosphere. The north and south equatorial belts are usually prominent as is the Great Red Spot -- a large hurricane system that has been raging for over 400 years.

NASA/ESA

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Usually associated with the spring sky, the Andromeda Galaxy can still be seen during winter months over in the west. It is found off the north east corner of the Square of Pegasus and from a dark site with little light pollution, it can be seen with the naked eye. The galaxy is one of the most distant objects visible with the naked eye and it lies an incredible 2.3 million light-years away. Through a modest telescope the galaxy looks like a large fuzzy blob and its companion galaxies, M32 and M110 can be seen.

High in the sky southern sky, almost overhead is the constellation Perseus. It is easy to identify from the curve of moderately bright stars making up the majority of the constellation. Following the curve of Perseus toward the north takes us to Cassiopeia and between the two is the Perseus Double Cluster. This duo of star clusters lies about 7,000 light-years away but there's only a couple of hundred light years between them. They appear side by side in good binoculars or in through small wide-field telescopes.

ESO

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There is nothing that inspires more than the sight of our own galaxy arching across a dark star filled sky. It is beautifully placed during the winter months but you will need to be away from the bright lights of cities to see it at its best. The hazy light we can see is coming from the 400 thousand millions stars that make up our own Galaxy but because we are inside it, we see it as a band stretching all around the sky. Galactic center lies about 30,000 light years away in the direction of Sagittarius.
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One of the closest star explosions in nearly 27 years was discovered this week by students and staff at the University of College London, and the supernova can be easily seen by stargazers equipped with a moderately large telescope.

Early on the evening of Jan. 21, a team of students — Ben Cooke, Tom Wright, Matthew Wilde and Guy Pollack — assisted by astronomer Steve Fossey, spotted the new supernova in nearby galaxy Messier 82 (M82), popularly known as the "Cigar Galaxy."

The enhanced color of an image returned by the Voyager 2 shows a level of detail unseen by Galileo.

Space Frontiers/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

While the new supernova is not visible to the naked eye, it is visible in telescopes, weather permitting. It may also be visible through a good set of binoculars. Here's how to find the new supernova in galaxy M82, which has now been catalogued as supernova 2014J.

To find M82, use the bowl of the Big Dipper. Extend a diagonal line from Phecda — the bottom left star in the bowl — up to the upper right star in the bowl, which is called Dubhe. Extending that line out at a similar distance between these two stars will bring you to the general vicinity of the two galaxies M82 and M81. M82 is positioned to the north of M81. Both galaxies were discovered by Johann Bode at Berlin in December 1774.

To see the galaxies, you'll need a good, dark sky and good binoculars. But to get a really good view of the supernova, I would recommend a moderately large telescope.

A 6-inch telescope at 150-power, or a 10-inch telescope at 250-power, should do just fine. The supernova is not in the central region the galaxy but is off to one side. Observers are reporting it at about magnitude 11.5 – about 100 times dimmer than the faintest star visible to the eye without optical aid, and whitish with a slight orange hue.

To celebrate its 23rd year in space, the Hubble Space Telescope snapped this view of the famous Horsehead nebula in infrared light. Usually obscured by the thick clouds of dust and gas, baby stars can be seen cocooned inside this stellar nursery. For the last 23 years, Hubble has been looking deep into the Cosmos returning over a million observations of nebular such as this, but also planets, exoplanets, galaxies and clusters of galaxies. The mission is a testament to the the human spirit to want to explore and discover. Here are some of our favorite recent observations to come from the veteran mission.

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

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Light from an ancient galaxy 10 billion light-years away has been bent and magnified by the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623. Without the help of this lensing effect, the distant galaxy would be extremely faint. Source: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/2012/08/results/100/

This is 30 Doradus, deep inside the Tarantula Nebula, located over 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. 30 Doradus is an intense star-forming region where millions of baby stars are birthed inside the thick clouds of dust and gas. Source: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/2012/01/results/100/

NGC 3314 is actually two galaxies overlapping. They’re not colliding – as they are separated by tens of millions of light-years – but from our perspective, the pair appears to be in a weird cosmic dance. Source: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/2012/29/results/100/

Arp 116 consists of a very odd galactic couple. M60 is the huge elliptical galaxy to the left and NGC 4647 is the small spiral galaxy to the right. M60 is famous for containing a gargantuan supermassive black hole in its core weighing in at 4.5 billion solar masses. Source: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/2012/38/image/a/results/100/

With help from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico, Hubble has observed the awesome power of the supermassive black hole in the core of elliptical galaxy Hercules A. Long jets of gas are being blasted deep into space as the active black hole churns away inside the galaxy’s nucleus. Source: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/47/image/a/

The striking Sharpless 2-106 star-forming region is approximately 2,000 light-years from Earth and has a rather beautiful appearance. The dust and gas of the stellar nursery has created a nebula that looks like a ‘snow angel.’ Source: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/2011/38/image/a/results/100/

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

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NGC 922 is a spiral galaxy with a difference. Over 300 million years ago, a smaller galaxy (called 2MASXI J0224301-244443) careened through the center of its disk causing a galactic-scale smash-up, blasting out the other side. This massive disruption generated waves of gravitational energy, triggering pockets of new star formation – highlighted by the pink nebulae encircling the galaxy. Source: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/2012/45/

NASA and ESA

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Four hundred years ago a star exploded as a type 1a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) some 170,000 light-years from Earth. This is what was left behind. The beautiful ring-like structure of supernova remnant (SNR) 0509-67.5 is highlighted by Hubble and NASA’s Chandra X-ray space observatory observations. The X-ray data (blue/green hues) are caused by the shockwave of the supernova heating ambient gases. Source: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/2012/06/image/a/results/100/

The intricate wisps of thin gas (billions of times less dense than smoke in our atmosphere) from Herbig-Haro 110 are captured in this stunning Hubble observation. Herbig-Haro objects are young stars in the throes of adolescence, blasting jets of gas from their poles. Source: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/30/image/a/

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

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Contained within an area a fraction of the diameter of the moon, astronomers counted thousands of galaxies in the deepest observation ever made by Hubble. Combining 10 years of Hubble observations, the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) has picked out galaxies that were forming when the Universe was a fraction of the age it is now.
Source: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/37/

During the Jan. 21 observing session at the University College London's teaching observatory, Fossey noticed that clouds were rapidly increasing, so instead of giving his scheduled lecture on practical astronomy, he decided to give his students a quick demonstration on how to use the CCD camera on one of the observatory's automated telescopes.

Messier 82 was chosen as a target and it was while adjusting the telescope that Fossey noticed a star that appeared overlaid on the galaxy — a star which he did not recognize from previous observations. Since sky conditions were rapidly deteriorating, the group took a rapid series of 1-minute and 2-minute exposures through different colored filters so that they could measure its brightness and color.

In addition, to ensure the object was not an instrumental defect, a second telescope was aimed toward Messier 82 to confirm that the new star was real.

One of Fossey's students, Tom Wright, later commented that, "One minute we're eating pizza then five minutes later we've helped to discover a supernova. I couldn't believe it. It reminds me why I got interested in astronomy in the first place."

A supernova is, for all intents and purposes, a star that has suddenly burst apart. The greater part of the star's mass is converted instantly into radiant energy and the resultant explosion can be equal to the light of 100 billion normal stars.

Messier 82 is roughly 12 million light-years away, so the star in question did not erupt on Jan. 21, but in reality the explosion actually took place approximately 12 million years ago.

Galaxy M82 is a popular deep-sky object for amateur observers and researchers, appearing in telescopes as a cigar-shaped smear of light; hence the moniker, "Cigar Galaxy." Burnham's Celestial Handbook describes it as spindle-shaped."

Nobody can say with certainty how bright the supernova 2014J, will ultimately get, but the best bet seems to suggest that it will maintain its current brightness, if not get a bit brighter through the next few weeks.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmer's Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, N.Y.